I've suggested on wikipedia-l to give a small number of non-developers developer-like powers, and that real developers should not use their powers for editorial or administrative purposes. The full text of the post is copied below. The idea was fairly well received on the list, so I've decided to do some promotion and a bit of discussion and pre-polling. The original post and replies can be found here. Tim Starling

There is no sense in giving developers administrative power. Developers

are good at programming, not management of a community. By wrapping up their ability to contribute with their ability to rule, they are made effectively unaccountable. Nobody wants to remove someone's developer access if it means they can't do much needed programming work. Administration of the encyclopedia also distracts them from programming, a task which they have a rare skill and motivation for.

Wikipedia should not be a technocracy, ruled by those with knowledge of computer systems. Wikipedia should be a democracy. Those in power should be accountable to the community at large, and ideally selected from and by the community at large.

I have written a feature giving people with the "developer" flag set in their wiki user accounts a level of administrative ability similar to what developers with shell access are capable of. Specifically, such users are able to set arbitrary user rights for any user on any Wikimedia project. They may create sysops, desysop, create bureaucrats or other developers, or any other user-rights operation you care to mention. This feature is operational right now, and I've been using it for the last couple of weeks to make bureaucrats on various wikis.

The feature is easy to use and does not carry the security risks of write-access to the database. At the moment, it is not possible to rename user accounts or change the history of articles through the web interface, but such features are planned.

I suggest we use this feature to split the roles of developer and site administrator. Specifically, here is what I think should happen:

1. A policy should be instituted disallowing any developer from using their power for administrative purposes, except where there is no other way to perform the relevant operation. New developers applying for shell access should be made aware of this policy.

By "administrative purposes", I mean exercises of power for any other purpose than testing and implementing software.

2. A small number of users should be made "honorary developers" (perhaps a better title can be found). These users should be selected by putting forward nominations and then conducting a vote, similar to the vote now conducted at the English Wikipedia for sysop access.

3. These "honorary developers" can lose their developer access by a community vote giving a majority in favour, by an arbitration committee ruling, or by Jimbo's decree.

It should be possible for a developer to hold both shell access and community blessing. Such people would take the role of both programmer and administrator. However as I said above, we really have a lot of programming work to do.

"Honorary developer" is a bit awkward, it would be nice if we had a better name for these people. Sheldon Rampton (?) used the name "wikicops" to describe a similar proposal of his, some months ago. I'm not particularly crash-hot on that idea since police don't promote people, and developers don't have any significant authority, and can't give orders. Does anyone else have an idea for a job title?

It's a shame sysop is already taken (sort of; I'd still rather see it deprecated myself), since it fits this role rather well. Somebody there has suggested janitor to replace admin/sysop, and bureaucrat isn't great, so maybe we need to rethink all these terms (and, indeed, roles). Feel free to edit, find a better home for, or just plain delete this list as you see fit: -IMSoP 02:43, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Housekeeper. (a bit twee, maybe, but emphasises the community aspect of the role, rather than the connotations of power)

WikiKeeper. (neologisms are great - once you know what they mean, of course. Also has amusing similarity to a cricketing term...)

Current bureaucrat - only(?) additional power: creation of admins

Admin creator. [or "$1 creator", if $1!="admin"] (there is no real need to have a memorable name for this role, unless it entails more than one purpose, in which case we'll start needing a complete "levels of experience" system...)

Proposed "honourary developer" - has similar access to the system as a developer, but for administrative rather than technical purposes.

Community developer (one who develops the community. But may not be a great idea to overload the existing term "developer")

WikiWarden (taken from the "wikicop" idea, but with the friendlier spin of the UK's new "community wardens")

Community warden (possibly a bit too watered down, given the power these users will have)

How about "coordinator"? It's used in all sorts of generalised wishy-washy ways in real life, such that it has little meaning of its own. It emphasises the interwiki role -- rather than being a part of the decision-making structure of a particular wiki, the coordinator liaises with the diverse power structures across the multilingual and multi-project effort. -- Tim Starling 06:54, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

How about Wikimedia Servant? Since these are supposed to be across all projects and to be only acting in accord with consensus policy this appears to encapsulate the key concepts, as well as not sounding desirable.:) Jamesday 01:15, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm, i am not sure I understand completely the difference between a bureaucrat (I'll shorten it to bu) and the new honorary developer (I'll call them hondev for simpicities sake, no, wait, I prefer stewart more, just read it). Well, sure, a bu is only allowed to turn persons to sysops on her wp, and a stewart may change this on all wps, but boths actions are logged, may be easily undone, and both must wait on community consensus to make their job.

Both positions don't have any power, only the technical ability to do something. So, their only reason for existence is to unload the developers from this burden (and that surely is a great reason). But why this double structure?

Well, maybe we have too many bus already, so the risk is to great to give them all stewarts power, but in this case, rather than introducing a new layer, I'd un-bu some (I'll rather give up my bu status than have more complexity than needed).

What risk is there? As far as I understood, stewarts can even de-stewart other stewarts, and block Jimbo and Brion and all the others, so, a well-organized stewart may even start a really damaging attack on the wp. Or will all her actions be reversible easily?

So, the rules will state, that they, in their role as stewarts (as are bus already), will be mindless slaves. They are not allowed to do anything that has no prior consensus. So why not merge these two roles? I mean, if we were able to install a bot who recognizes consensus and then performs the appropriate action, wouldn't we just do it? The only reason we (will) have humans in this position is the lack of such a bot. (Please, I don't want to lessen the persons who fulfill this role, neither their work and time, I appreciate both highly; I just state my perception of the role itself).

By the way, are bus or stewarts allowed to decline performing an action that received community consensus?

I suppose bureaucrats are language-specific, whereas this hondevs are not. That's why the selection is made here, at meta, as opposed to each language-wikipedias.

Regarding the decline, I suppose hon-developer is not supposed to, but if that happens, people can talk to the mailinglist, etc., and discuss/ review the performance of the hondev, and possibly demote him/her. Tomos 03:49, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I do not think so. If these people will have rights on international wikipedias, there is a *serious* problem to discuss. Do Wikipedias have a right to different power structures, or do we necessarily have to follow this one ? If so, why should english people have power over international wikipedias ? Anthere

As far as I understood, hondevs won't have rights on international wikipedias, but power. English people will (and do) have power (but no rights, except for Jimbo) over international wikipedias, and ever will. The question is, shall, by implementing international hondevs, also users from non-english speaking wikipedia have the power over the english wikipedia (but alas, still no right), or shall only users from the english wikipedia have power over the non-english speaking wikipedias. --denny 15:25, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Umm.. You are against this idea? There is already such a power held by developers. Tim's recent proposals and contributions, MediaWiki namespace, Bureaucrat, and this hon-dev are all in the direction of reducing the non-programming duties (and administrative privilages) of developers.

No, *I* agree with Tim idea very much. But most french wikipedians seem to not agree with this idea *at all*. So, that is embarassing; I proposed myself, but the reaction was "not again an additional layer, no way". We discussed this the whole week, with admin candidacy at the same time. And most do not like the idea of another level. So, I do not know very much what to do. I would like us to use this very much, but if people there do not want, what do we do if non-french come to do the job nonetheless ? Anthere

Replacing developers for those duties are sometimes language-specific appointees (like admins and bureaucrats who can now change wordings in the interface, make someone admin). But not all the duties can be performed locally - some small wikipedias need someone like Brion who creates the first admin. Hondev is for that purpose, and therefore an interlingual position. It is like Brion's ToDoList will be taken care of by these people, and we do not have to feel very sorry to burden Brion everytime we need to report some problem or request to him. (Though I would certainly miss Brion and Tim, since they both understand Japanese and that helped Japanese Wikipedia many times).

As I mentioned earlier, it is also better if certain functions can be turned on/off by these people, as opposed to developer, I think. Bureaucrat functions, direct display of external images (when URL is written), blocking of registered users, and many other functions are now turned on/off by developers. Some functions, such as search and page counter, should be controlled that way, but others could be better handled by hondevs. (Well, if that is technically feasible).

And certainly, people active at non-English wikipedia can apply for the position and seek for support. You have my support if you accept the nomination. :-) Tomos 05:01, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

thanks. Well, I put myself back, with the point that I will not do it on fr, as long as people do not want anyone there but a developer to do it. I will also copy your comment on the fr pump. It is perhaps better that what I explained. It seems clearer that what I told them. Thanks Anthere

Does anyone have any thoughts on the number of people we should aim for to have developer powers? I would have thought three or four would be enough. We might set up a quick opinion poll later on, if necessary.

Nominated by: Tim Starling: Angela has been extremely active in the Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk namespaces over the last 6 months, organising the formation of many policies. In her enthusiasm for weeding and quality control, she has edited almost every functioning Wikimedia wiki. She also lives in a different time zone to Mav, so she'll be able to deal with situations arising when Mav is unavailable.

Support, of course. While there is of course no onus on Wik to explain his opposition, I am nevertheless curious as to what s/he has against Angela specifically, except that Angela--that notorious vandal (or was it troll?)--protected some articles to The Wrong Version. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 00:07, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Support. I would be hard-put to think of a better candidate than Angela. The only crime I could accuse her of is Wikiholism, but that hardly constitutes grounds for impeachment. I've seen the way she follows us all around, cleaning up after us ... Angela, where would be ever be without you?Davidcannon 02:15, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Oppose. Although I was the one to second the nomination, she recently violated the deletion policy. In addition, Secretlondon is right in saying that she does epitomise the cabal and IRC groupthink. Yesterday she threatened legal action if I did not remove IRC logs from my website (she threatened action (which she said would be executed by JamesF) against me and my ISP even though she is a big supporter of "no legal threats") If she denies this I will supply the private message logs. Also, she is in her twenties, doesn't she have a life outside of wikipedia? Perl 20:44, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It was an exact copy of a page from the English Wikipedia. Exact copies of other pages are clearly candidates for speedy deletion. I have no idea what epitomising the cabal is supposed to mean, not how I am meant to deal with such a thing. I have never threatened legal action; I merely told you that Jamesday (not JamesF) was saying he would do this in #wikipedia, not that I would, nor anyone else. Where do you get the idea that I am "a big supporter of no legal threats". I believe I was the first person to oppose that policy on the English Wikipedia. Finally, what I do in my life outside Wikipedia is none of your business. I see that as an unprovoked personal attack. Angela 23:03, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Oppose Perl's late opposition. Legal threats were in no way made in the channel itself; the veracity of any private-message IRC logs is unverifiable. This poll, furthermore, is closed. - Fennec 22:49, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

As already stated, I will only help on wikipedias which explicitly agree with the use of this status Anthere

I am a sysop and bureaucrat for the Maori Wikipedia. I would like to nominate anthere for developer access. Anthere is a sysop for the english wikipedia and the French wikipedia. She never abuses her powers and she would be a good developer. Perl 01:50, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Support. From numerous email postings of her that I have read on various lists, I believe that she is interested in listening to and serving people, as opposed to teaching and leading them. I would like someone like her to serve us. Tomos 06:19, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've seen Anthere out and about in a few places. I personally like the work she's been doing, and I have no reservations about supporting her for developer access. I think we need a few people like her around. Davidcannon 11:58, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Support Aurevilly 07:28, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC) Even though not perfect, who is ? - Anthere is totally committed to the project, sprightly more than hasty ; besides, more responsabilities make people like her more cautious since she's got an actually balanced temper.

Support Yggdras 19:20, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC) Anthere tries to have consensus between people before making an opinion, especially in the case of Stuart Little.

Oppose. I trust her, and support her, but she does misuse the powers she has, and on that basis, she need not be given more. We don't need all trusted users to have developer access, but only the ones who have not even stretched the trust previously. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 03:50, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Comment : I asked privately to Cimon why he said I had abused sysop power. He answered I had not. I asked him to clarify his position on the matter here, which he somehow did here. ant

Okay. Let me be explicit. I think Anthere exceded the authority given to mediators in the case between 168 and mav. I think she did it in the best of motivations, and no fault should befall her for it, but nevertheless, the readiness to unilaterally expand the role of mediator was, and is troubling. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 10:00, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I understand this. I think this would not be a problem if arbitration committee had been doing what it was initially set for. I embraced the MC committee with the belief there would be an arbitration committee behind. I also embraced that specific mediation in telling 168 there would be possibility of arbitration behind. I was wrong. There is no arbitration behind. I just tried to settle the case the best I could, to the best of my ability and the best of my energy and beliefs. Anthere

I started a poll here to try to define whether the issue with Stuart was 1)a full collection of user conflict between SL and long-trusted users or 2)a community conflict. You are most welcome to add the opinion of a newcomer. Depending on the result of the poll, either we will have to fix conflicts between SL and a dozen of contributors, or to define a community answer to a bad user attack. The current only answer of SL to that poll was to move it to another page with a detrimental title. I hope you participate to the discussion. Anthere 11:15, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Stuart Little' answer

It is not a poll but a call for lynch due to biaised questions and false informations. Here are listed her lacking of netiquette [fr]. The long-trusted users are users who agree with Anthere and Aioneko. The problematic user is the user who don't agree their behaviour. F.i. Aioneko intiated 3 calls for Lynch based on the mere fact he didn't understand frequent used words in social science. Aioneko acts often as he thought his own opinion must be be consensus opinion. By the mean of the long duration of their sysop mandate, Aioneko and Anthere are followed by a lot of people whithout any check of the origine of the conflict.

Another exemple : in the supposed poll, the whole set of defence item's were moved anywhere in order the people attending the votation cannot read them. Anthere acknowledged the questions were biaised but deny people should be under influence by the one-sided presentation.

She initiated her own destitution case in order to influence the french wikipedia users. See R's opinion.

It's a fallacious interpretation. When I give argument against Stuart Little pov, I'm accused to want to impose mine, and when I ask wikipedians opinion in French's Village-pump, I'm accused to make a calls for Lynch. This user is problematic not because of his contributions (even if I sometime don't agree his pov), but because he makes nothing to try to pacify the multiple conflicts in which it is implied. A☮ineko 02:45, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Stuart opinion : Opposition by User:Stuart Little. Comments move to User talk:Stuart Little. Oppose for abuses. All documentation on my user page, unfortunately in French, peculiarly on the way to build a troll. I'm going to give more documentation on such abuses and I will try to give it in English. So, it will take some time Stuart Little

Nominated by: Tim Starling: Wikipedia's most active contributor, Maveric149 has done a tremendous amount of work for Wikipedia over the last two years. Mav is always cool and rational when dealing with a dispute, and works hard to find a compromise amenable to all parties. Respect for him in the community is universal. [note: Mav points out that I may be exaggerating slightly]

Oppose, solely because Daniel is already an arbitrator. I do not think that judges should be also policemen.—Eloquence 04:07, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

So then current developers should not be arbitrators? And since when have developers been cops? Admins are cops too... Not that I want this position anyway (too many hats already). --mav

I'm not an arbitrator, and developers are "cops" because the system which is in place here is not implemented yet, so only developers have the ability to enforce certain rules.—Eloquence 16:38, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The AC only pertains to the English Wikipedia. I've already said that I will not do any steward actions on the English Wikipedia except in cases of emergency. --mav

I believe that The Anome is worthy of more support than this, or failing that, the courtesy of some sort of rationale for the opposition votes. The consistently high quality and accuracy of his edits makes him an enormous asset to the project. True, he has not been involved much in Wikipolitics, but I see that as a strength rather than a weakness, in that it provides an element of balance.

For fair voting process, I don't think it is right to vote against people because of a belief that the "developer access" should be capped at three (or any other number). That should be decided as a separate matter, since if we are indeed limiting ourselves to a certain number, we should each choose to support no more than that many individuals. UninvitedCompany 21:01, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with you. I don't believe there should be a specific limit to the number of developers.Davidcannon 13:35, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Oppose. Not because of the conduct of Hephaestos but because there seems to be broad agreement about three and that seems initially to be sufficient to replace the single Tim who has been doing it, until, with some experience doing it, those three express a desire for more help. Jamesday 01:03, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Oppose. I hardly love Hephaestos less than Anthere, but he too relies on that love, not too much, but enough to not invest more powers on him. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 04:04, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Nominated by Davidcannon. Morwen does more work on Wikipedia than just about anybody (unless you count the bots). I would like to nominate her for this position. As a professional computer programmer, Morwen would bring valuable skills to this position.

Nominated by User:Anthere. Looxix is a french editor. He has been extremely active for some time now, and a very highly trusted admin. He has a very stable mood. Last fall, I suggested that he be given developer status, partly in the intent that he takes care of the kind of thing that this status will make possible. Looxix left wikipedia for about 3 months but is now back with us. He expressed this week that he was not willing yet to involve him as much as until last fall. If he does feel like it again, and if french wikipedia is ok with using this status, I would like that Shaihulud (developer) and Looxix share this responsability on fr. Anthere 15:22, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Nominated by Gentgeen. Karl is the glue that holds wikibooks together, and while the 'pedias are the largest part of the wikimedia world, the sister projects deserve some level of representation on the highest levels of the administration. Karl has been fair and polite while acting as an admin at wikibooks.

Nominated by mav. Ed is a highly-motivated and well-respected, if a bit controversial, user who always means well. He already has these powers since he is a developer, but he has not have had much time to contribute to server and software work. I can't recall any situation where Ed used his developer status in a way that was later overturned or even highly controversial. I therefore fully support Ed for Steward.

Thanks, mav, but if we have to choose between you and me -- well, you are unquestionably the better choice! --Ed Poor 12:50, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Oppose. Nothing personal, but I question his NPOV credentials. Now, I'm not saying that anybody fits the bill perfectly (that's probably impossible), but I do think somebody with the powers under discussion needs to be exceptionally objective and fair-minded.Davidcannon 13:19, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'd say that Ed, for someone with his POV, is very good about keeping it somewhat under control (especially given the kind of "jokes" he gets on the mailing list and such, and the moral issues he must have with many things that many of us discuss pretty casually). Pakaran 15:51, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Nominated by Rob Hooft. André is a Dutchman with sysop rights on the nl: and en: wikipedia's. He has been working on wikipedia since March 2001(!) at the time the English wikipedia had less than 1000 articles, and has since become one of the most international contributors to the project (check the top users in the statistics of the different languages to verify this), this fact in itself nominates him for this new task. André is emotionally very connected with the succes of the Wikipedia project. André can be found regularly (almost every day) on other communication media (mail, irc), and always helps out everyone that needs help. He is also an actively developing robot operator. In short: He has the "wiki spirit"!

Support. If I had 100 votes, I'd give them all to André Engels. As a user who takes a keen interest in the Esperanto Vikipedio, I can see that without André, it would be going nowhere. I think we need him at the hub. Davidcannon 10:26, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Support. Andre is an experienced moderator on the dutch wiki who as far as I know has always acted politely, tactful and thoughtful. And he forgets to mention his passive knowledge of Afrikaans. TeunSpaans 18:36, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Nominated by David Cannon. Arno is a French Wikipedian, who is also one of the pillars of the Esperanto Vikipedio. In addition to French and Esperanto, he is fluent in English, Spanish, Italian, German, and a number of other languages. His dedication to the Wikipedia project, together with his command of multiple languages, would make him an ideal person to put at the "hub" of the system, and I would like to nominate him for developer access. Davidcannon 23:18, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Nominated by Elian. Fantasy is active in the english, german and italian wikipedia and speaks at least these three languages fluent (about others I don't know). He cares a lot for contacts between the wikis, is a friendly and calm guy and good in resolving conflicts. I have full trust that he will not abuse developer power. --Elian 00:17, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Just a short comment: Last year I started to develop Mediawiki a little bit to help Brion and his boys (and girls?) improving Wikipedias Backbone. But after some time I realised, that there was no time left for Wikipedias community. I love to help people, to find ways to solve conflicts, to organise real meetings of wikipedians, short: to help people whereever I can. Therefore i stopped my programming-efforts and put my full time now in the Wikipedia-community.

If you think I could help the community by being this new kind of developer/steward/... I will try to give my best :-) Fantasy 10:32, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Not a nomination, just a clarification: Perl told me he don't want to be nominated "developer access"; the entry formerly found here was an attempt by a troll, probably aiming at collecting negative votes on Perl. I write this here, because people often don't check the history (I often do not), and so this might prevent others to fall into a trap. -- Tillwe 21:24, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Naturally. The nomination was added by Perl himself (See [2]). Now, if Perl is indeed a troll, perhaps we should block him :-)

Alex did nominate himself but later withdrew it. The most recent nomination of him on this page was by the troll. Angela 19:35, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I didn't nominate myself for anything. I was told that this was the page to request stewardship which (in my impression) just meant that you can create admins on foreign language wikipedias that don't already have them. Perl 20:18, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

After I was told on IRC that stewardship was the same as developer access, I removed it because i didn't want that access, I only wanted the ability to create new admins on wikipedias without any. Perl 20:18, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)